We are passionate about creating user experiences that will delight your customers. Working side-by-side with our clients, we create compelling, insight-driven experiences that drive more sales and reduce support costs.

We provide a full range of services for web sites, web applications, mobile apps, and desktop software. From initial evaluation, strategic planning, and user research, to application/site design, testing, and implementation, we will advise you on the right level of investment in usability to get the maximum return.

Our clients are corporations and non-profits, from Fortune 500 to early-stage start-ups who are united by one common goal: That everyone who interacts with them and their products must have the most memorable experience possible, in every sense of the word.

Services

Our services allow you to fully understand the thoughts and behaviors of your customers, use this information to drive product decisions, and implement specific design improvements that matter most to them.

Our usability evaluation and consulting will help you drive the design, and implementation of best-in-class user experiences for web sites, web applications, mobile apps, and desktop software. We are experts in ethnographic research, prototyping, and experience testing; all of which may be utilized in any of our services.

We are comfortable and experienced providing UX leadership across your organization: engineering, marketing, product management and sales. We are relied upon as the true voice of the customer because we always put the user first and don’t get lost in the technology.

Oftentimes, our engagements begin with our heuristic evaluation, where we uncover the match between your system and the real world. We’ll find the “low hanging fruit” where simple, low-cost improvements in the user experience can yield very significant results. Learn about our free heuristic evaluation.

Our Services Include:

Heuristic evaluation

pro-IA will evaluate your application or website for the match/mismatch between the system and the real world by comparing it against established guidelines and principles, noting potential usability issues and ranking them in order of severity. We will suggest the best corrective measures, providing meaningful, actionable feedback to designers, product managers, and other stakeholders.

Strategy consulting to define clear business and usability goals

Good design can come from many perspectives. But there is one critical factor that makes a successful design: Intimate understanding of the user's point of view and aligning their expectations of satisfaction with your business objectives. We work with all stakeholders, inside your organization and out, to research, define, and articulate both sides of this equation and then guide the discussion towards the proper balance between them.

Information Architecture: Organizing the structure so that information is findable

Information architecture (IA) is defined as the art and science of organizing and labeling data including: websites, intranets, software, and other mediums of information, to support usability. We’ll provide the tools to help you organize your information and present it to the user in a comprehensive and intuitive way.

Usability Testing

We will define the overall requirements, process, participants, and methods. We then create an environment at your office(s), a research facility, or use remote testing to let you see customers either using your product or visiting your website. We gather the results, analyze the data, and present it to your team with clear, actionable recommendations for improvements.

Full discovery & design

Whether it be creating new software or websites, or redesigning an older system, we can provide the complete range of UX services from concept to deployment. This includes:

1. Understand your customers and know what they want to do

Pro-IA can design and conduct customer surveys and visits providing ethnographic studies to help you understand what they really think. We will deliver to you a set of written ‘personas’: groupings of users who exhibit similar behaviors, attitudes, and motivations in their purchasing decisions, use of technology, and customer service preferences.

2. Create a clear conceptual model and storyboard for the design

We can work with your marketing, product and engineering teams to define the system’s usability objectives and create the framework for the follow-on design decisions. Typically, this brings together four critical cornerstones for development (or redesign) of the product or website:

3. Wireframe designs with full review and refinement

We will construct a visual, wireframe of your interface before a single line of code is written. Depending on your needs, these wireframes will vary in their level of detail, but they always reflect our ideas about the priority, placement, and labeling of elements on the page, navigation, and how the user will interact with the site or application. These wires are first reviewed internally, then with a representative group of customers to determine if additional changes should be made.

4. Final visual design of the user interface

We offer our clients a minimum of three attractive, inviting designs to choose from, ensuring that each blends the usability insights gained from the earlier phases with a consistent look and feel to maintain your application, website, and/or corporate identity.

Portfolio

Information Architecture

It’s common knowledge that in traditional architecture, a house needs the proper foundation and structure; otherwise, the entire building would come down. The same can be said of Information Architecture.

IA consists of finding out who the users are, what their goals and needs are, and then creating a system for it to all hang together in an intuitive and meaningful way. No final user experience can exist without it. At least, … not for long.

If proper planning isn’t done, an application or website will begin to show the stress as features and topics are tacked on in an ad-hoc manner. Eventually, the product or website can become so cumbersome, the entire experience falls apart.

Following are some examples of the different types of deliverables that can come from the exploration and research phase. Each project varies in length of time, because of htat, the types of deliverables will varry depending on what is deemed the most helpful to the business and engineering teams.

Just like a traditional Architect, the Information Architect can make or break your next project. That’s why pro-IA is an essential partner for success. We bring over 20 years of expert industry experience to make your next project the best that it can be.

Samples

User Experience

The first requirement for a wonderful user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without frustration or confusion. At pro-IA we believe the "user experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. In creating a total experience of simplicity and elegance, we can create a product that is a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing a checklist of features. Instead it solves problems in innovative ways and creates an experience that is pleasant, efficient and effective.

In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphic, and interface design.

Samples

Design

Our roots are in Graphic Design. We began designing before there was an internet and feel that no product, logo, brochure, or user interface, can be done well without a solid understanding and training in design. You can see the cross over and how information design informs Information Architecture, just as web and interface design are grounded in the principles of good graphic design.

A complete user experience must cross all boundaries and design must extend from the corporate identity, to the trade booth and on to the product and website.

Samples

Graphic Design, Information Design, Animated Video

Article

About pro-IA

Who We Are

Lorena is a customer-focused, solutions-driven UX professional with over 20 years of creative leadership. She is respected for her knowledge of UX & UI best practices, design strategies, and trends across web and desktop applications, website design, and mobile apps. Additionally, she has over 10 years of senior level experience having built and managed design teams within technology organizations. She has managed complex UX development projects as a lead consultant for large, well-known digital agencies. With an eye for detail and her solid analytical and communication skills, she has delivered break-through results for corporate and non-profit clients largely in financial services, healthcare, and high tech.

Lorena founded Boston-based pro-IA in October 2008. She then assembled a small, responsive team of UX specialists, allowing her to expand the range of UX consulting services she provides. For clients both large and small, the team at pro-IA has successfully turned new ideas into meaningful products with great user experience through market research, user-driven product design, and user experience innovation.

Other specialized investigative processes include ethnographic research, prototyping, and experience testing; all of which may be utilized in any of our services.

Our Approach

pro-IA’s mission is to create more loyal customers for our clients. We want everyone who interacts with our customers and their website and/or software to have the most memorable experience possible, in every sense of the word.

At pro-IA we blend the designer’s perspective with the user’s reality to create intuitive, successful products. Not only are we “pros” at organizing information, but our roots lie in design where we are trained to hone our ability to be imaginative, recognize patterns, construct ideas and create images that are emotionally meaningful, as well as functional. All the while, we never forget what it is to be the everyday person, like your users, navigating through the visual, electronic jungle that is today’s landscape.

We strive to make anything we design as meaningful, elegant, and low stress as possible. Helping you along the way, without words is our expertise and we believe every software product, web or mobile app, and website we design deserves our best effort in doing that.